Robot design and development

HyQ is a fully torque-controlled Hydraulically actuated Quadruped robot (pronounced [hai-kju:]) developed in the Department of Advanced Robotics at the IIT. HyQ is designed to move over rough terrain and perform highly dynamic tasks such as jumping and running with different gaits (up to 3-4m/s). To achieve the required high joint speeds and torques, hydraulic actuators are powering the robot’s 12 active joints. For more information on the robot scroll down or refer to (Semini, 2010).

Goals of the project are the design of versatile robots, the investigation of various aspects of quadrupedal locomotion, adjustable compliance, energy efficiency, compact hydraulic actuation and onboard power systems.

CAD model of HyQ with onboard hydraulic system (left) and pictures of the mechanical skeleton of HyQ (centre and right)

Leg Design

Each leg features three degrees of freedom (DOF), two in the hip (abduction/adduction and flexion/extension) and one in the knee (flexion/extension). The leg is built of a light-weight aerospace-grade aluminium alloy and stainless steel. High resolution encoders and load cells in each joint allow a smooth control of both position and torque. We are currently designing and testing several foot designs with and without adjustable stiffness to soften the impacts at foot touch-down and to store energy from one step to the next.

In the beginning of 2008, we successfully reached the first milestone of the project: The design and construction of a first 2-DOF leg prototype (Fig. 3, left) with an actuated hip and knee joint in the sagittal plane (Semini et al., 2008). Since then, we have extensively used the leg to test its mechanical structure, the hydraulic actuation system and to evaluate various joint level controllers (Semini et al, 2008; Cunha et al, 2009; Focchi et al, 2010). For the experiments the leg was either mounted to a vertical slider or fixed to a work bench. We studied the behavior of the mechanical structure and hydraulics upon leg impact with varying leg weights up to 25kg. Furthermore, we tested the leg during continuous hopping with different frequencies up to 3Hz, since hopping is a simplified form of running (see video).

The experiments proofed that hydraulic actuation is very suitable for highly dynamic legged robots, due to its high power-to-weight ratio, high torque and speed and ability to cope with torque peaks (Semini, 2010).